Broke
by Jimperbam
Summary: Sometimes keeping your younger brother from becoming road kill requires a bit of sacrifice.


Honestly, this was spawned by my intense desire to write a halfway decent fanfic. Good wording, passable plot, the works. Personally I think I dominated and got a glorious story to boot. Also, this was before I watched a clip about Dean having broken his leg. It's all a part of being Alice. XD

Disclaimer: you know the drill.

It was a cacophony of disjointed images and sounds-unbalance from being shoved; sun-bright headlights and the chrome grill of a roaring semi, both very eager to personally meet his face; a distant shout; hitting the warm, wet pavement hard and finally blacking out for a moment. Sam shook his head, working to put together the fragmented pieces of the last ten seconds of his life as his scraped palms relayed to his brain their discontent.

"Sam? Sammy? You okay?"

_Dean._ Sam latched onto his brother's voice and squinted through the drizzly darkness for its origin. He made out Dean's figure that grew clearer once his eyes adjusted to the glare of the headlights. Dean regarded Sam from an army crawl position.

"Dean?" Sam's head felt a little slow and stupid.

"Right here, Sammy. Are you okay?"

"Yeah..."

It came back to him quickly and in very sharp clarity. He'd been fighting the shapeshifter in the parking lot of a biker bar. It had landed a few good punches, which resulted in Sam being tossed unceremoniously into oncoming traffic. There wasn't time to recover and react after seeing that metal force of nature coming for his soul, but something had rammed him from the side. But that didn't explain why Dean would be-

"You shouldn't have done that!" Sam exclaimed, piecing it all together at last.

"Probably, but I kinda prefer you as you and not a permanent addition to the road. Now help me up."

It was an odd request in itself; Sam could count the number of times Dean had ever asked for help on one hand. Nevertheless he rose, popped his back, and collected his older brother from the ground.

It happened all at once. An almighty tremble coursed through Dean, followed by a strange sort of strangled moan, and he slipped right through Sam's fingers.

"Son of a *bitch*!" Dean bellowed. His hands flew to his left leg.

"Dean!" Sam dropped just as fast, alarm coloring his tone. "What's wrong?"

"What the hell d'you think's wrong?" Dean snapped, his breathing shallow.

Fear and guilt momentarily numbed Sam beyond the ability to speak. He was fortunately spared immediate reaction by the truck driver, who had gone into the biker bar and was now returning with a small crack team of rescue workers. Two female bartenders' hands searched Sam for any severe injuries. Sam shook them away. "It's my brother, his leg's broken," he tried to explain, but the brunette cut him off.

"We've got an ambulance on the way," she assured him. "It'll take a bit-we're not exactly on the beaten path-but we'll get you two patched up for now."

Sam eventually managed to crawl away from the women's well-meaning fingers. He knelt by Dean's head and winced; Dean was spouting off words and phrases he'd never before employed even at his maddest. "Just hold on," Sam ground out. Dean seemed not to hear him "Here..." Sam gently lifted his brother's head and placed it on his lap.

The involuntary movement roused Dean from his meticulous cursing of all things holy and not. "This hurts," he told Sam as though the fact was a revelation.

"Yeah, sounds like it," Sam half-laughed.

A Santa-gone-rogue biker was tending to Dean's leg. Sam noticed a couple Vietnam veteran patches on his leather vest and breathed a sigh of relief. At least this man would hopefully know a thing or two about injuries.

"That ambulance is a while off, kid," the biker told Dean. "We best set this sucker and get some liquor in you."

Dean groaned miserably. A fresh sheet of sweat broke over his contorted face. "Skip right to the liquor part and you got a deal," he panted.

"Dean," Sam began gently.

"No way in hell, Sam!"

"If we don't do something now, it could be a lot worse later. Please, the sooner we do this, the sooner we can get you boozed up."

"Yeah, sure, lemme just snap your leg and see how you-"

A very sickening crunch made Sam jump. Dean instantly arched his back and dug his nails into Sam's arm, but the pain of suddenly having a bone set was apparently too much to express in expletives or a scream.

"It's okay, you're okay," Sam chanted automatically. He grabbed a reassuring handful of Dean's shirt and shook it slightly to remind Dean of his presence.

Like a balloon in time lapse, Dean gradually deflated and was left pale, drenched in misty rain and sweat, and very ill-looking. Sam tentatively shook him again, and Dean gradually peeked up towards his perpetual source of comfort. Sam wasn't prepared for what happened next: Dean's pale lips morphed into a forced yet natural childish grin, as though he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and not with one of his limbs shattered. Sam was stunned for a moment, then he managed a small return smile.

"'S'okay, Sammy," Dean murmured. Exhausted was an understatement for the wispy way his words escaped. "Gonna be okay."

"I'm supposed to be telling *you* that."

"Ha. Yeah, well, looks like you need to hear it more."

"Alright buddy, let's get you inside," the Vietnam vet interjected. He had just finished applying a makeshift splint that would make MacGyver green with envy.

Dean set his jaw against the pain as the vet and another burly biker lifted him onto a stretcher made purely of manpower. Sam hurried along beside the procession, unwilling to let go of Dean's shirt. He didn't know how much comfort the gesture gave Dean, but it made Sam feel like he was at least slightly in control of the situation.

The men laid Dean right on the bar amid avid stares from curious patrons. "Thanks," Dean

croaked to the vet. "Really appreciate it, uh-"

"Massey." The vet clapped Dean on the shoulder and handed him a full bottle of amber liquid.

"Dean. This is Sam. And cheers." Dean tipped the bottle back.

Sam shook hands with Massey. "Really, thanks," he said again. "I don't know what we would have done if you weren't here."

"Hey, no sweat. Guess the Corps wasn't completely useless, eh?" Massey winked.

Sam smiled. "Our dad was in, too."

"Shoulda guessed it. You kids are regular soldiers yourselves. Looks to me like you've seen quite a few fights."

*You have no idea*, Sam thought fervently, but he merely shrugged politely.

"Well, take care of yourselves, boys." Massey saluted them and, after a slightly lingering gaze, returned to his pack of friends and reclaimed an abandoned mug.

"He was nice," Dean said conversationally, but his voice was too strained to fool his guardian.

"It can't be long now," Sam sighed more to himself than Dean. "I can't believe this, I can't believe I-"

Dean delivered a rather pathetic blow that was still enough to make Sam pause. "Don't even say it," he warned.

"It's true. We've still got a shifter running around, and with your leg, you won't be doing any hunting for a long time."

The thought apparently hadn't even crossed Dean's mind. His expression melted into one of horror and he whined, "Son of a bitch!" before draining the bottle that was still three-quarters full.

"Dean," Sam protested out of habit. If Dean got too drunk, the doctors would probably be hesitant to give him anything for fear of a reaction with the alcohol.

"Tell me you're kidding," he begged, groping for another bottle. "I can't be out of commission! Winchesters don't take sick days!"

Sam tried to find an opening in which to console his brother, but the compounded pain, adrenaline, and creeping intoxication had loosed a filter in Dean that could not be replaced without the aid of unconsciousness.

"God, I'll be useless! I wasn't built to be useless! And Bobby, he'll never let me live it down, he'll make fun of me as bad as I did when he was in the wheelchair. I can hear the names now-Crutches, Gimpy, Princess, Cupcake-! Sammy, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life!"

The last melodramatic declaration brought Sam into a fit of laughter he was hard put to recover from. "Sorry," he chuckled, seeing Dean's poisonous glare, "it's just that-you went to hell, Dean. You've been shot, stabbed, run over, crushed, electrocuted, and tortured, and yet you say that breaking your leg is the worst thing that's ever happened?"

Dean was now sulking from his brother's lack of sympathy. "All that was quick," he snapped. "Maybe not hell, but I bounced back from that. But this? This is gonna be a _pain in the ass_ even after I get the cast off!"

Paramedics rushed through the door. Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Just when he thought he couldn't bear any more of Dean's drunken pity party.

Sam accompanied Dean in the ambulance and stuck by his side in the ER room of the nearest hospital. The assigned nurse, a pretty redhead named Jaime, told them when it was all said and done that whoever had set Dean's leg had done a heck of a job; the doctors only had to install the cast. Sam silently thanked the attending higher powers for whatever dumb luck that brought Massey to that grungy bar.

"You thought I was done, jerk," Dean hissed the moment Jaime left to collect the prescription painkillers. "What the hell am I supposed to do if I can't hunt, huh?"

"Hopefully Bobby can tolerate you for a couple months." Sam didn't mean to taunt, but getting Dean medical attention had him in a much better mood.

"Tolerate *me*? Where'll you be?"

"I'll check up on you as much as I can. I won't go more than a state away and I'll come back every weekend and in between jobs."

"You'll be hunting? Oh my *God*!"

"What?"

"You're gonna go without me?"

Sam opened his mouth to reply condescendingly, but closed it as the tenor of the outraged question registered. Underneath the indignance, Dean sounded hurt. Scared, too, but mostly betrayed. "Do you want me to stay?" he asked slowly.

"No, I want you to go to Canada! Of course I want you to stay!"

Just the fact that for once Dean wasn't pushing him away drew a brilliant smile to Sam's face. "Yeah? How come?" He knew he was pressing his luck, but perhaps, under the right combination of medication and alcohol...

"So you can wait on me hand and foot," Dean grinned. "And drive me places, and push my wheelchair down hills, and watch bad daytime movies with me, and-"

"Okay, okay," Sam laughed. "You got a deal."

"Good. Now sign my cast and write a note telling me how awesome I am."

"Too bad you only have one leg's worth of space."

Sam watched peripherally as Dean's grin froze and softened. His entire body seemed to relax as the pleasure of the compliment worked more miracles than could any drug.

It wasn't every day (or even every year) where they were openly nice to each other, but Dean's proposed plan of spending some non-hunting quality time together reminded Sam of a time long ago when such affection was relatively commonplace. He didn't really mind the prospect of waiting on Dean-he'd surely get unbearable at times, but hopefully the elder could rein in his usual childish behavior in favor of harmony. Besides, Sam had to make it up to him. He owed Dean his life...again.

Bobby allowed them houseroom without grudge, partially out of family love and mostly to get Dean back for all the wheelchair cracks. Dean sought solace from the barrage of snide comments by burying his mind in the television. A week into his three-month sentence, he was doing just that when Sam entered with his order of KFC.

"Excellent." Dean abdicated the remote in favor of the cardboard bowl of fried chicken. "Find me somethin' to watch. It all sucks so your choice can't be any worse."

Sam flipped through the channels. He let out a short laugh upon seeing one of the programs. "You weren't joking. The Christmas Cottage? It's the middle of August!"

"See what I mean?"

"How about a Jason movie?"

"Nope."

"Hey, House of Wax is on."

"Nuh-uh."

"I'm sure you'd love some Gilmore Girls."

Dean was unamused.

"We'd probably have more fun talking," Sam said offhandedly.

No response came. He raised an eyebrow at Dean, who was just rummaging for a biscuit. Sam experimentally cut off the TV. Dean didn't protest, but glanced up at him as though waiting.

Sam smiled.


End file.
